Category: Automation Impact on Jobs

Robot taxes and universal basic income: How do we manage our automated future?

Robot taxes and universal basic income: How do we manage our automated future?

4 pictures Automation and artificial intelligence are set to replace humans in a wider array of jobs than ever before, so how does society deal with it? As more and more jobs are becoming automated, the world faces a dramatic shift in the underlying structures of its labor economies over the next 20 to 50 years. The conversation is slowly becoming more prominent in the mainstream with several major figures highlighting the problem and proposing different solutions. Elon Musk maintains that the idea of a universal basic income is the best solution, while Bill Gates advocates for a robot […]

Workforce automation

Workforce automation

Photo Courtesy of I4U News Jose Rodriguez
CONTRIBUTOR

Automated systems are part of our everyday life workforce, from manufacturing to self-checkouts in a supermarket. The implementation of said systems replaces human workforce members, generating worries each time new technologies are introduced.
Recently Amazon introduced its new convenience store “Amazon Go,” which is said to open early this year in Seattle, Washington. This store promises to provide shoppers with a simple shopping experience without lines, check-outs or registers, all thanks to machine learning, computer vision and artificial intelligence according to Amazon.As these new technologies are introduced, questions and fears about the future […]

Could Bill Gates, Elon Musk, and Stephen Hawking all be wrong? Yes

Could Bill Gates, Elon Musk, and Stephen Hawking all be wrong? Yes

quotes Bill Gates, Elon Musk and Stephen Hawking as he warns There’s a rising chorus of concern about how quickly robots are taking away human jobs. He also cites an Oxford U. study In 2013, policy makers largely ignored two Oxford economists who suggested that 45% of all US jobs could be automated away within the next 20 years. But today that sounds all but inevitable. Gates, Musk and Hawking are the smartest humans in the world and I have cited them early and often in my innovation blogs and books. But, no disrespect, but none of them is […]

Cuban: Trump can’t stop rise of the robots and their effect on U.S. jobs

Cuban: Trump can't stop rise of the robots and their effect on U.S. jobs

Add Mark Cuban to the list of tech visionaries exhorting the need to address the advance of robotics and artificial intelligence.

"Automation is going to cause unemployment and we need to prepare for it," Cuban posted on Twitter with a link to an essay about the rise of robots in the workplace.

Employment and jobs have been a hot topic recently with President Trump’s emphasis on getting U.S. corporations to focus on jobs at home and his plans of tightening of trade and immigration policies to foster job growth. Automakers including Fiat Chrysler, GM and Ford, as well as Intel and […]

Automation Contributes To Decline In Oil Jobs

As oil prices plummeted, nearly 160,000 oil jobs, or 30 percent of the total workforce, have been cut since 2014. The rise in robots have ensured that those jobs will not be coming back.

The New York Times explored automation’s effects on employment in the industry, particularly in oil-dependent places such as Texas.

While oil production is trending upward, companies are hiring fewer people, and they are emphasizing brains (remote tech jobs) over brawn (blue-collar workers in the field). Artificial intelligence and machine learning make oil production safer, faster, and cheaper. Computers now direct drill bits that were once directed […]

Bill Gates’ solution to job automation? Make the robots pay tax

Bill Gates’ solution to job automation? Make the robots pay tax

Rumours of the robo-job takeover have been circling for years.

A recent report suggested that almost 250,000 public sector jobs could be lost to robots in cost-cutting exercises over the next 10-15 years.

Microsoft founder and philanthropist Bill Gates has a novel solution to the issues of job losses due to automation. In an interview with Quartz , the tech mogul said robots who replace human workers should incur taxes equal to that of worker’s income taxes.The idea is that governments should tax companies’ use of robots as a way to fund other types of employment. Gates told Quartz : “Right […]

What will we do when everything is automated?

What will we do when everything is automated?

Image by : opensource.com Recently, I came across a study the caused me to think beyond the day-to-day world of code-slinging in which I live. According to the study Myth and the Reality of Manufacturing in America (PDF), conducted by Center for Business and Economic Research at Ball State University in Indiana: "Almost 88% of job losses in manufacturing in recent years can be attributable to productivity growth, and the long-term changes to manufacturing employment are mostly linked to the productivity of American factories." Just translate the term "productivity of American factories" into the word "automation" and you get […]

Bill Gates says robots that steal jobs from humans should be taxed ‘at a similar level’

Bill Gates says robots that steal jobs from humans should be taxed 'at a similar level'

Robots that are employed to do jobs that were previously performed by humans should be taxed at a similar level to their human counterparts, according to Bill Gates .

In an interview with Quartz , the American business magnate said taxing companies that replace human workers with robots could help to slow the spread of automation, and fund other types of employment.

"Right now, the human worker who does, say, $50,000 worth of work in a factory, that income is taxed and you get income tax, social security tax, all those things," he said."If a robot comes in to do the […]

Robot workers should pay their fair share in tax, says Bill Gates

Robot workers should pay their fair share in tax, says Bill Gates

If robots are to take jobs away from humans, it stands to reason they should start paying their fair share in tax, according to Bill Gates.

Speaking in an interview with Quartz , the former Microsoft boss argued that governments should be able to tax companies that make use of robots, as a way of slowing down the growth of automation and to provide funds for creating employment elsewhere.

"Certainly there will be taxes that relate to automation," argued Gates, adding that unchecked automation may lead to massively reduced income tax revenue."Right now, the human worker who does, say, $50,000 worth […]

Robots Will Soon Do Your Taxes. Bye-Bye, Accounting Jobs

Robots Will Soon Do Your Taxes. Bye-Bye, Accounting Jobs

Tax season has arrived, as the Super Bowl recently reminded us: In the first half alone, two commercials encouraged viewers to trust computers to do our taxes, the first from H&R Block with its new partner Watson, and the second from TurboTax with its friendly talking tax bot.

Vasant Dhar (@ProfDhar) is a professor at the Stern School of Business and the Center for Data Science at NYU. He is chief editor of the Big Data journal.

Machines won’t be able to automatically file taxes with the IRS for a few years. But do these commercials signal that robots can come […]